Time to raise L4 intensity ??

thule

Hi,

I´ve been working with SST/lower L4 since a few months. Now i think i reached a plateau because there is no progress in this level. I ´am only able to work with the same power in 20-30 min Intervalls, than i did 2 months ago.
Maybe now is the time to do more upper L4 work with shorter effort´s (10-12 min.)??

I´m a 36 year ol Mountainbiker with a lot of L2/3 history. I´ve done a lot of races, but i think there must be more in my old body..
Since 5 months i´m working more with the Allen/Coggan style
In the beginning there was a lot of progress but now it stoped.

sorry for my bad english, schools out for a long time

jbvcoaching

It's good you have recognized the plateau, which is normal after several months of the same type of workout. I'm not sure that shorter L4 efforts are going to have much impact though, and really I don't ever suggest L4 intervals shorter than ~15 minutes, unless they're being done with limited recovery (i.e. - 8x5M w/1M recovery).

I would think more about L5 work for a month or so, depending on when your important races are, and how much CTL (or base, or whatever you want to call it) you have.

I think it also depends what your own personal strengths & weaknesses are.

I almost forgot, I wrote an article on this a few years ago:
http://jbvcoaching.com/documents/88VN7.pdf

daveryanwyoming

Great article John and timely as folks start thinking about preseason prep and higher end work.

Thule, in addition to the higher end approach based on VO2 max work you might also consider adding load by stretching your SST and L4 efforts. IOW, you can increase load by raising power or increase load by holding similar power levels for longer periods. Both methods can work and it depends in part on how soon you'll be racing and whether your sustainable power(FTP) is as high as you'll need for your events yet. Longer SST/L4 efforts will also build more CTL than moving to high end work so which approach you choose also depends on where your CTL is relative to your goals and whether you're ready to start spending CTL(and quite probably induce peaks) yet.

I'm not knocking John's advice, raising your aerobic ceiling with L5 work might be just the trick to break through your plateau. Just that there's other approaches you might consider as well.

-Dave

thule

o.k. for example:
today i did 2x20 efforts with 328W and 324W. The second was really hard !
Maybe next time i try to reach 335W in the first and see what happens in the second, right ?

acoggan

Be careful there...neither Hunter nor I attempted to advocate any particular approach to training in our book. IOW, don't confuse the examples given as a suggested plan, or a means of describing training as an actual prescription.

jbvcoaching

Oh yeah? Next you're going to tell us you don't think 95% of 20MP is a great estimate of FTP!!!

thule

I think my training has a good structure. Besides i get a trainingplan from trainingpeaks . Befor i read your book i never done any structured FTP Training...

I only want to get over the plateau i described.

Steve_B

I think that 328 and 324 for 2x20 is good consistency and that is exactly what I like to see out of myself at certain points in my development, consistency. That the second effort was "really hard" says that you were "reaching" but since you were able to complete it, that means it wasn't totally beyond your capability. Assuming that you are pushing yourself and not riding too easily, it is normal for the second effort to feel harder than the first.

Had you tried to reach 335w on the first effort today, you might have been able to complete it but then given that you said that the second effort was "hard", I think that you might not have been able to reach even 320w for the second. Sometimes it's good to over-reach like this (335 for the first then <320 for the second) to find your limits, however, you may find that you make better fitness gains with a more consistent intensity for the two efforts. I know that I do.

I like to be comfortable doing 2x20 at a certain level before I try to make them more intense. So, if it were me, I would keep doing the 2x20's at ~325 until the second effort isn't so hard. Then you know that you are ready to increase the effort level. Then repeat the cycle and increase again once you are comfortable.

That's not the only way to approach this. You could also decrease the power and try to do 3x20. IOW, instead of 2x20 at ~325, try 3x20 at ~290. (This is what DaveRyanWyoming was referring to by increasing duration.) This can also produce great benefits as well. Or, consider doing L5, as John suggested.

I don't know what will work for you - only you can find that out - but I can tell you that if you keep doing the same thing, you probably won't make much more progress.

Ade Merckx

Hi John, not trying to be a smart arse but when you refer to Latate threshold in your article I assume thats what we also describe as Functional threshold or TT power

Steve_B

John, should I start drinking chocolate milk?

jbvcoaching

Yeah, the unedited original just said "threshold". Only so much detail you can go into in 1000 words, so thanks for asking me to clarify.

jbvcoaching

No! Chocolate milk is no good for drinking! You should bathe in it daily though.

doctorSpoc

ok, my 2 cents... of what works for me.

i actually like to do the reverse of what you are doing... i run the first one conservative/comfortable, can still be hard but not over-reaching and then do the 2nd one how ever i'm feeling... if i feel good, i bang it out, if not, i do what i can.

i find that by doing my workouts like this you end up getting more out of the two efforts (higher ave power for the set... which is what i think you should be shooting for) than if i had banged out the first one. if i bang out the first one i know the second one is going to suck and if i really went overboard then i might not even finish the second one (and this is worse case scenario, since you basicically f'd up you workout and you're not going to get out of what you would have had you even done them both slow).

at the end of the 1st one i might feel tired but after the recovery i'm usually pleasantly surprised at how good the 2nd one goes... as long as i take the 1st 4-5min well within myself and then ramp up...most of my highest number are on my second intervals...probably since i'm supremely warmed up. i also do 10min recovery since again, ave power for the set goes way up just by adding 5min to my workout... so it's worth it to me (time is a big issue for me since it's limited but that 5min is REALLY worth it in the end)... i also do my recovery at about 80% FTP... a little higher than most.

once i start to get comfortable and i start to plateau then i increase volume i.e. going to 2x20min +10min then to 3x20min

also in my regular schedule i alternate between 2 to 3 x10min at upper L4 AND every other workout 2 to 3 x20 at mid L4... alternating upper L4 and mid L4 days seems to work really good for me

Piotr

Nothing really wrong with trying 335W for 20 min if you're testing your 20 min critical power, but you won't get far on your second block. Have you considered doing 315W for 40 min or more first? 2 x 30 min perhaps? You didn't plateau physically as much as you got mentally stuck on (2x) 20 min at apparently 100%+ of FTP. Ease up and extend the length of your blocks. You may be pleasantly surprised. Just today I did 90 min straight @ 91% of FTP. Sweet Spot training baby!

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